


Would You Allow Me a Weakness (if that weakness was you)

by Anonymous



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Brief knifeplay, Canon Compliant, F/F, Implied/Referenced Sexual Content with a side of Murder Contemplation, no beta we die like philippa (prime), terran space gfs, the sex is consensual but the murder would not be, uses info from Terra Firma but no spoilers really, what can i say they're Terrans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:22:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29436012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Going somewhere?” the voice behind her asks, the words teasing. Joann doesn’t answer, doesn’t even turn and look at her. “You usually stay.” Her fingers are at the base of the zipper now. Slowly, slowly, she draws it up, the cut diagonal across her chest. There’s a shift on the bed behind her, the rustle of sheets and the creak of the mattress before warm hands are sliding over her shoulders, arms looping around her neck. “Usually, you’re the one beggingmeto stay.”(Or, Mirror Owo finds out that Keyla is part of the coup against the Emperor.)
Relationships: Mirror Keyla Detmer/Mirror Joann Owosekun
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14
Collections: Anonymous, Femslash February





	Would You Allow Me a Weakness (if that weakness was you)

**Author's Note:**

> ~~totally not me writing sad mirror jola for valentine's day~~
> 
> Also, how does this ship tag not exist yet? I am very sorry to have to christen it with this angst-fest 😂

She tugs her pants on slowly, taking time with the buttons and then the boots, then reaches for the shiny black shell that is the jacket of her Honor Guard uniform. She pulls one arm through it, and then the other, shrugging it over her shoulders and freeing her dark, coiled braids from getting trapped underneath the collar with one sweep of her hand.

“Going somewhere?” the voice behind her asks, the words teasing. Joann doesn’t answer, doesn’t even turn and look at her. “You usually stay.” Her fingers are at the base of the zipper now. Slowly, slowly, she draws it up, the cut diagonal across her chest. There’s a shift on the bed behind her, the rustle of sheets and the creak of the mattress before warm hands are sliding over her shoulders, arms looping around her neck. Keyla’s bare breasts press into the back of the oiled leather and Joann closes her eyes as her breath ghosts next to her ear. “Usually, you’re the one begging _me_ to stay.”

“I do _not_ beg!” Joann replies forcefully, her eyes still closed. The reflexive response does nothing to prevent the familiar scent of Keyla from filling her nose and wrapping itself around her, spice and metal and fuel-burn though Keyla hasn’t been close to a combustion engine in years, and does nothing to take away from how true Keyla’s words are. Usually, it is her quarters aboard to be the soon-to-be-obsolete imperial flagship in which they are ensconced. Usually, it is her who catches Keyla’s hand when she rises to don her boots so soon in the afterglow. Usually, it is her pulling her back down for another kiss, for just another moment lying next to each other in the darkness, hearts beating as one.

But not today.

“I have an early shift,” Joann says, opening her eyes, though she still does not dare look at Keyla.

“So?” Keyla asks. “Take the turbolift in the morning.” Her voice drops to something darker, huskier, that despite everything still makes heat coil low in Joann’s abdomen. There’s a flash of teeth next to her ear and a bite of pain that is so much more than pain. “You know I have another round in me.”

“No,” Joann says, removing Keyla’s fingers from where they’ve attempted to tug the zipper down again. She steps forward abruptly as the arms around her neck threaten to tighten, and a wave of anguish washes over her again that she does not know, _cannot_ know, whether they were meant to help or harm. Her boot clatters against something metallic on the floor, and she bends to pick it up, feeling Keyla’s confused gaze burning into her back. She slips the knife—long, thin blade, slitted handle—back into the belt of her uniform from where she had thrown it just a half hour earlier, trying not to remember trailing the tip of it down the delicate ridges of Keyla’s spine, watching the quake and shudder and tremble of her breaths as her fingers fisted the sheets. Wondering if she could do it. If she could just thrust—

But no. She hadn’t. Joann was weak, and she had promised herself one final night.

And now that night was over.

“Is this about Rhys?” Keyla asks, and Joann realizes she hasn’t planned this far, and that her hand is still wrapped around the handle of the knife. The darkness in Keyla’s eyes as Joann had pushed her down, climbed on top of her for once instead of the other way around, the hunger, the excitement… That was the moment she had been sure the intel was true, that Keyla’s time here aboard the I.S.S. _Shenzhou_ serving as First Officer to Michael Burnham, Butcher of the Binary Stars, had seduced her. Turned her.

Into a threat.

A traitor.

An _enemy_.

“Just let me go, Keyla.” For the first time in her life outside of silk sheets the word _please_ pummels at her lips, begging for release. “Let me _go_.”

“He’ll lose,” Keyla says with derision, and from the familiar sound of rustling she is pulling her underwear back on and a tank top over her head, has given up on further sex, for now. “He doesn’t stand a chance against you, doesn’t know his _place_ challenging you for head of the Honor Guard. You are strong, Joann.”

No, she isn’t. If she was strong, Keyla’s body would be thirty minutes’ cooled by now. If she was strong, she would make up for her earlier lapse by drawing the blade across her throat right now, a blood-red smile in her jugular. If she was strong, she would do her duty to the Emperor.

Under imperial law, after all, the penalty for treason is death.

There are no exceptions.

Instead, she turns to face Keyla, finally, and stares into those blue eyes that she had once dared to trust. Rage and betrayal and impossible choices swirl in her chest like the hot lava of Ereidon IV, burning through her like the fire of Keyla’s hair in the sunlight. She hates Keyla for putting her in this position, whispering her loyalty to Joann under the cover of darkness while plotting a coup against the Emperor she is sworn to protect. But she hates herself even more for hating Keyla for doing what any Terran would have, and for not being Terran enough herself to be what Keyla or Her Imperial Majesty needed her to be.

“I know about the plot against the Emperor,” she says, and she watches as Keyla’s expression shifts from shock to alarm to blank to confusion, all in the space of a few microseconds. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have caught it, but she knows Keyla.

_Knew_.

“I don’t—”

“And I know you’re a part of it,” Joann says, the words ash in her mouth. Maybe another would have spat the words, or shouted them while advancing, weapon in hand, but Joann is not Captain Burnham, who needs to exert her will on everyone around her and have them know it, or Landry, who likes to play with her food before she eats it. She has never been one with the particular desire to wreak havoc with a violent show of force, to put her dominance on display for all to see. Besides, there is no victory in this, no glory to be had, just the ashes of a fire she didn’t know was dying.

Keyla’s eyes narrow, the confusion replaced by steely eyes and a curl of her lip that is harsh and cold. It is so much like Michael’s that for a moment Joann wonders how the Emperor cannot see it, what her precious daughter and Lorca are plotting. Keyla’s eyes dart to the pile that is the rest of her clothing on the ground, where her own weapons are hidden. “She is growing weak, Joann; you must see it, spending day-in and day-out with her as you do,” Keyla says with a sneer. “And now she builds a palace in the sky, as our enemies unite against us. What happened to the iron fist? What happened to conquest? What happened to _terra firma_?”

“She is the Emperor, Keyla,” Joann says softly. “And I am the head of her Honor Guard.”

“Georgiou _has_ no honor anymore—”

“She has me.” Joann meets her scorching gaze, each word slow and deliberate. “She has _my_ loyalty.” _Was I a fool to think we could ever keep yours?_

“Then perhaps you share her weakness,” Keyla says, although the words lack the scorn that should color them, her eyes a little too bright. They flick to the knife still in her hand, and Joann knows she still thinks more of her than she should, still thinks that her loyalty and ruthlessness toward traitors to the throne would ever, ever let her lay a finger on Keyla.

But Joann knows the truth now, maybe has always known it from the moment the rumor reached her ears and she’d known she’d have to make this choice.

“Joann…”

“It’s Commander Owosekun,” she says, and opens her palm, lifts her hand from the blade. Keyla watches her every movement, a furrow between her brows at the release of the weapon and every muscle in her wiry body ready to bolt for her own, so very far away on the floor. Her throat is bared, a Terran facing death in a much more immediate sense than the old maxim. “I can’t kill you,” Joann says, and looks down so she does not have to see the disgust on Keyla’s face, or more dangerously, anything but. She pulls the zipper of her uniform the rest of the way up instead, black leather molding to her body and the collar closing tight and firm around her neck. “I can’t turn you in to be executed.” She straightens the red-gold badge upon her chest, then finally meets her former lover’s eyes again. Stricken is the only word for it, but Joann keeps her words quiet and firm, ending with just a hint of challenge. “And if that is weakness, strike me down for it, Keyla, if you dare reveal yourself to the Emperor.”

She turns away then, and strides toward the door. Every footfall away from her drags a lead weight behind it, but Joann marches on. It slides open for her with a slight hiss when she reaches it, revealing the senior officers’ corridor of the _Shenzhou_ outside.

“Joann,” Keyla says from behind her, her voice breaking on the last syllable. Her legs pull to a halt outside of her control, leaving her paused in the doorway as if teetering on a precipice. Joann forces herself not to look back, can’t bear to see the crushed look in Keyla’s eyes—or, worse, to see nothing at all. “ _Joann_ …”

Yearning rises in her chest, deep and aching and stronger than the most powerful gravitational pull.

_Joann, I love you._

_I choose you._

_I’ll stay._

_Stay._

She can hear her swallow in the stillness of the room, just as she can see the ripple of her throat in the dim light. “Whoever it is…I’ll make sure it’s not me,” Keyla says. _I couldn’t kill you either._

Throat tight, Joann nods, tears she cannot— _will not_ —let fall burning behind her eyelids. “Long live the Empire.”

She takes another step forward, the weight of her boot dragging her onward and her fingernails clenched into her palms. The door whooshes shut behind her, and then Joann is alone in the corridor, teeth held together so tightly it feels as if they might splinter and crack. She crosses one arm over her chest, fingers clenched into a fist, but all there is is silence.

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all feedback appreciated <3
> 
> Also, have some art:


End file.
